New year celebration around the world

Director Sophia Takal isn’t making a New Year’s resolution for 2019. In fact, in New Year, New You fact, her installment of Blumhouse’s horror anthology series Into the Dark, out now on Hulu, she goes the extra step of confronting the often unrealistic and “psychologically damaging” self-care platitudes that are even more prevalent in the social media age. New Year, New You starts out like your typical New Year’s Eve night: four girlfriends (played by Suki Waterhouse, Carly Chaikin, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Melissa Bergland) meet up for a girls night on the last day of the year to reflect, drink, and recite their resolutions. But the celebration soon turns into a bloody nightmare during a particularly tense game of “Never Have I Ever,” when celebrity self-care guru Danielle (Chaikin) reveals her fabulous escapades while the rest of her friends struggle to come up with equally incredible confessions amid their mounting jealousy and fury. … [Read more...] about New Year, New You director Sophia Takal on turning social media self-care into horror

Chad Porter, better known as “Chyadosensei,” is a prominent streamer who has reaped the benefits of Twitch Prime since it came to Japan in December 2017. That was only nine months ago, but Porter tells Polygon that the service has had an unquestionable impact on his stream. Now, Porter, along with many of his favorite streamers and personal friends in Japan, worry that changes to Twitch Prime will have an irreparable effect on their steaming livelihood. Earlier this week, Twitch announced that its Prime subscription service would no longer offer ad-free viewing. Losing subscribers — many of who subscribe to channels through Twitch Prime — is a top concern for Porter and other vocal streamers around the world. “As of right now the Twitch Prime subs have been constant but I feel like a lot of them are simply going to vanish since a lot of Japanese use other websites for shopping aka Rakuten [Amazon’s biggest competitor, according to Porter], Kakaku … [Read more...] about Twitch Prime changes are worrying streamers around the world

FORTNITE has received its latest major update with patch 4.5. The Playground Limited Time Mode is the big highlight, letting you and up to three friends drop into the main map on your own and able to build to your hearts' content without the bother of being shot at by other people. It comes after Epic Games confirmed last month that Fortnite would be getting a Playground Mode "soon". Players will also be able to dive into a new Final Fight Teams of 12 mode. Here the storm stops encroaching part way through the match, at which point a countdown timer becomes your main foe. The team with the most players standing when the timer ends wins. The weapon merry-go-round continues, with submachine guns getting a buff as shotguns get a bit of a nerf in 4.5. Tactical and Silenced SMGs have had their damage boosted and accuracy upped, while the damage shotguns do to structures has been reduced, along with the amount of ammo that drops for the explosive pellet-chuckers. BATTLE ROYALE BUG FIXES IN … [Read more...] about Fortnite update 4.5 live now – here’s everything that’s changed in Battle Royale and Save The World

TWITTER stopped working for users all around the world in an unexpected outage. The website went offline at around 2.50pm UK time, then came back online at 2.58pm – and then went back offline at 3.01pm. Service seemed to be restored at around 3pm, but the website went back offline immediately. It's not yet clear exactly what went wrong. Users trying to get on the website were met with an error message: "Something is technically wrong. "Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon." The Down Detector website, which tracks services when they go offline, revealed that several thousand people complained about the outage – although it's very likely many more (and potentially) all users were affected. One distraught user wrote: "TWITTER IS DOWN... THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD" Another said: "Was panicking I'd lost my account. Phew. Not just me." Data on the outage suggests a range of different devices are being affected, including the … [Read more...] about Twitter DOWN – social network goes offline for users around the world

In a recent teaser on the Overwatch Twitter account, Blizzard announced the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year event in Overwatch, this year featuring the Year of the Dog. The event is set to kick off on February 8. It is currently unknown which heroes will receive new skins and emotes in this event, but if the Year of the Rooster event is any indication, every hero will receive some cosmetics this time around. Much like the other yearly Overwatch events, the skins and other cosmetics from last year’s event will likely be available at a cheaper price, while the new items will be at full price. Last year’s theme was Journey to the West, which added fancy new skins for Zenyatta, Winston, Reinhardt, and Roadhog, all based on the classic Chinese novel. This year may have a theme as well, though Blizzard has made no announcements in that regard. Mei also received several additional cosmetics, since she is the hero from China in Overwatch. 🎊 Wishing you … [Read more...] about Overwatch kicks off Lunar New Year Celebration Next Week